Hearing impairment is the ubiquitous condition which results in significant societal, economic and psychological diseases at all ages. The cause of more than one half of these diseases and disorders resulting in hearing impairment are genetic, The conference on Genetics of Hearing Impairment will present new critical advances in genetics which are related to hearing impairment. These will include the application of molecular genetics to human hearing disorders; the role of animal models; a critical presentation of syndromic, non-syndromic and polygenic varieties of hearing impairment;the relation of genetics to human variation in hearing: the application of human genetics to diagnosis, treatment, councelling and ethics. There has been no recent conference or major publication which concerns the genetics of hearing impairment. As the last two major publications in this area were published in 1976. Nor were there any major conferences concerning the topic of genetics of hearing impairment since the publication of these two books more than a decade ago. There is now a critical body of specific knowledge concerning the genetics of impairment, which combined with contemporary advances in genetics in general and of human genetics in particular, will allow for a coherent, purposeful and effective conference and publication, which should quantitatively advance knowledge in the area of genetic hearing loss. The conference will result in th publication of the present state of the knowledge in genetic hearing impairments. This will serve as an effective stimulus for increased scientific endeavor in this area of human disease. The format of the New York Academy of Sciences has been chosen so as to gain maximum scientific input and a wide distribution of the proceedings of the conference.